Are to Me a Mirror
by Neon Kitsune
Summary: Sometimes the smallest change is all it takes
1. Not in Kansas

**Notes:** Takes place between "Hunting" and the disciplinary hearing of "The Mistake". This is my first published _House_ fic, so please be gentle. But if you think I've messed up the characterizations, _please_ let me know!

* * *

Janet hurried up the slope, cursing under her breath. It was her own damn fault for not realizing how hard it was going to be to get a parking spot on Hospital Hill, but she'd always hated being late. As she stepped into the ambulance driveway...something happened. For just a moment, the space of a blink, the world shifted around her and then snapped back into its normal shape.

She froze in place, one foot still on the curb and the other on asphalt. It hadn't lasted long enough for her to process while it was happening, but something had changed. The steep terrain and interlinked buildings of Oakland had gone flat and open, and she would have sworn it was colder for a second.

To her left, a horn sounded and Janet started out of her daze. _Great, just great_, she thought as she started walking again. _At least I'm on the way to a doctor_. A gynecologist, granted, but that was what referrals were for. If she even needed a referral. It was probably nothing--just too much stress and an overactive imagination.

She got to her door, finally, and as she reached for the handle to yank it open it happened again. The institutional tan-and-blue of the lobby beyond went a little darker, sprouted a desk and decorative trees in pots that were clearly fake because no real tree had leaves that red in May. Janet blinked and it all cleared away. OK. Maybe not stress. For one thing she was pretty sure that flash had lasted longer than the first.

She got through the door before the next one happened. This one was definitely longer, lingering enough that she started to get details instead of just impressions. It was still a hospital; the women behind the desk was in scrubs and so were a number of the passers-by. There were horrid textured murals on the walls by the elevators. And the desk nurse was giving Janet a funny look, as well she should because this time it wasn't going away. Janet knew she was standing there gaping, and the details were starting to look _familiar_ somehow. She made herself take a step towards the desk. She was pretty sure the desk nurse was talking to her and it wasn't hard to guess the question: _Are you all right?_

She tried to say no, but the words wouldn't form and before she could worry about that the world went white and very, very quiet.

* * *

Allison Cameron stepped out of Exam One with her last patient of the day right behind her. They chatted amiably about the weather as they went to the clinic desk for Allison to drop off the chart and sign out, and then the patient shook her hand, thanked her, and left. Allison watched her go with satisfaction; it had been a simple enough physical exam and the woman had been pleasant to talk to.

She started for the elevators, pushing through the clinic door. It had been a bit of a long day.

And, she realized, it was going to stay long, because the woman her last patient had just brushed by, standing just inside the outer doors, was white as chalk and pretty clearly about to go out for the count. As Allison started towards her she took a shaky step towards the desk as the duty nurse asked if she was all right--which was a silly question, but it was what they were trained to ask, to try to get a response as a gauge of how bad it really was. The duty nurse had the desk between them, blocking her path, so Allison was the first to the woman's side, getting there just as her eyes rolled up into her head and she fainted dead away.

Allison managed to catch her well enough that she didn't hit her head on the way down. It wasn't a faint, because fainting didn't cause seizures and there was definitely some seizing going on. Allison shifted her grip and managed to roll the woman onto her side in case of vomiting, snapping out orders as she did. She did a quick overview while she waited for the gurney: none of the telltale junkie gauntness, no smell of alcohol, no MedAlert tag warning of diabetes or epilepsy, no bleeding or bruising around her head, no trauma at all that Allison could detect on a first pass. Her pulse was frighteningly fast, though, and she didn't respond when Allison pinched her hard.

Allison knew it hadn't really taken the ER folks long to get there, but the strange stretched time of a crisis made it seem like forever. As they loaded the woman onto the gurney one of the ER techs asked, "Coma Cocktail?"

Allison almost smiled despite herself; an EMT she'd known once had called it that. It was the standard "I don't know why this person's unconscious" mix: glucose to deal with low blood sugar, Narcan to block opiates, and something to take care of alcohol. "Yes, and give her an anticonvulsant," she said. She was about to order something for the tachycardia as well when the pulse under her fingers began to slow. "Wait!" she said to the tech, who had a syringe out.

The seizing stopped. Allison pinched the woman again and this time got a verbal response that was almost a word. "OK," she said. "Someone get her purse and check for ID, get an IV started anyway just in case, and let's admit her." She sighed. It _was_ a long day. "And please page Dr. Foreman for me."


	2. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

By the time the rhythm of the heart monitor changed, the short November day had given up the ghost for good. Allison looked up from her book and settled her doctor face back on. The patient, whose driver's license had dubbed her Janet Siciunas, stirred and muttered like someone coming out of a dream. After a few moments she opened one eye just enough to look around, but then closed it again quickly.

"Ms. Siciunas? Are you awake?" Hoping she'd pronounced the surname right, Allison got out of her chair and walked to the head of the bed, waiting until Ms. Siciunas opened her eyes again--both, this time--and got her bearings.

"What happened?" she asked, sounding reasonably alert.

"We were hoping you could tell us," Allison said. "You had a seizure in the lobby of the hospital. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Seizure?" Ms. Siciunas sounded surprised and a little indignant, once you got through the groggy. "I've never had a seizure."

Allison gave her a reassuring smile and said, "I'm afraid you have now." She pulled her penlight out of her pocket and clicked it on. "Follow the light for me with your eyes, OK?" Her patient did as instructed and Allison put the penlight away. "Good job. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?"

"I was...on my way to my yearly poking at UPMC." Allison guessed she must have looked curious because Ms. Siciunas explained, "Pelvic exam. I was late because parking in Oakland sucks, so I was hurrying. I was going up the hill when the world went...weird. Flat. Not flat like two dimensional, flat like no hills. Then it went away so I kept walking. Happened again when I was at the lobby door, I thought I saw red trees for a second. And then once I was inside, it happened and didn't stop happening. I think the nurse was trying to ask me if I was OK, but that's all..." As she listened Allison got steadily more concerned, an effect that was intensified by a stray memory of where "UPMC" was--in Pittsburgh, on the other end of Pennsylvania from New Jersey. She realized that Ms. Siciunas had stopped talking and made an effort to smile again. "I'm going to go get a colleague, a neurologist," Allison said, trying for calm. "Just hold that thought for a moment."

* * *

At the tone of Foreman's voice, House's ears perked up. "Whoa. OK, on my way. Is she violent?" the neurologist was asking--on his cellphone, since House couldn't hear the other half of the conversation. But whatever it was, it was interesting, so he fell into step, as much as he could, as Foreman emerged from the Diagnostics conference room. Foreman gave him a sidelong look of annoyance but kept talking to whoever was on the other end.

"OK--hold the elevator!--I'll be right there," Foreman said. They got onto the elevator. "Go keep her talking, don't let her pass out again if you can help it. Did you do the exam yet?" He listened briefly, then said, "I'll be there." Which seemed to be the end of the conversation, because Foreman snapped his phone closed and gave House a look which only barely concealed exasperation.

"Sounds like you're having an entertaining day," House said blandly.

"Cameron has a patient who needs a neuro workup, that's all," Foreman told him. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

"Oh, well, I'll just come along," House said, more to twit his subordinate than for any other reason. "I _love_ watching a master at work." He hid the grin as Foreman shook his head resignedly.

* * *

Ms. Siciunas was sitting as Allison had left her. As Allison stepped into the room, she spoke, sounding more than a little rattled. "So...this is where you tell me how long I have till my brain starts leaking out of my ears?"

"What? No, it's nothing like that," Allison said, a little taken aback.

The patient blew out in a fear-driven parody of a laugh. "I'm not a doctor," she said. "But when a person has a seizure and then the doctor asking her questions goes to call _another_ doctor without even introducing herself? I'm pretty sure that's bad."

"I'm sorry," Allison said, immediately contrite. It had been stupid of her. "I'm Dr. Cameron."

"Janet Siciunas..." Ms. Siciunas replied, but her voice trailed off and her eyes went very wide. Alarmed, Allison watched the color drain from her face. She got to the patient's side and said loudly, "Janet. Janet, I need you to stay with me."

Ms. Siciunas screwed her eyes shut and started breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. "OK," she muttered. "OK, just a dream. Just a dream." Allison chose not to argue, figuring calm was more important. It took a few moments for her to get her breathing under control, but by the time she did her color was better.

"Right," Ms. Siciunas said at last. "OK. I have a question." She opened one eye and peered at Allison through it.

"Ask," Allison said encouragingly.

"Dr. Cameron. _Allison_ Cameron?"

Allison stared at her. "What?" She tried to remember if her ID was visible.

"Your first name, is it Allison?"

"Yes," Allison said slowly, "but how did you know?" Ms. Siciunas started smiling, looking very relieved, but didn't have time to answer before Foreman came through the door, followed closely by--of course--House, who immediately began regarding the patient as if she were a new species of bug. No one said anything for a moment, until House piped up.

"Cameron, you're supposed to give _her_ the bad news, not the other way around. You look like someone hit you over the head."

Foreman rolled his eyes, and the familiarity of Foreman being annoyed with their boss let Allison scrape her wits together enough to say, "Ms. Siciunas, this is Dr. Foreman, he's a neurologist, and Dr. House."

"Call me Janet," she said, still looking more relaxed than she had any right to. "So do I get an MRI? You guys always do MRIs."

Foreman gave Allison a glance, which a year and a half of experience easily translated as _What's up with her?_ Allison looked back, _Did I or did I not say "severe delusions"?_ Foreman shrugged, acknowledging the point, and stepped forward.

"First we'll do a little neurological exam," he said to Ms. Siciunas, who looked a little disappointed.

"I already did the follow-the-light thing," she said. "And the last thing I remember but since that's what made Dr. Cameron go call you I'm thinking I screwed it up somehow."

Foreman smiled in that way he had when he thought a patient was jerking his chain...which, Allison noticed with surprise, Ms. Siciunas seemed to pick up on as well. "Why don't we start with something a little simpler," Foreman said. "What day is it?"

"Tuesday, if it's still the same day it was when I was on my way to my appointment. I had the day off for the primaries, which is kinda the bonus of working for the government." There was a pause, then Foreman said, "You have primaries in November where you live?"

"November? It's May...isn't it?" Foreman shook his head silently. Ms. Siciunas stared at him for a long moment.

"This isn't a dream, is it?" she said, sounding shaky again. She brought her hand to her mouth, and Allison had begun looking around for a basin to offer when the woman bit down hard on her index finger. All three of them started towards her, but before they could get to her she pulled the finger back out and stared at the marks her teeth had made. "That hurts," she said dully. "This isn't a dream. Nothing hurts in dreams." They all relaxed a notch, which turned out to be a little bit premature as Ms. Siciunas had just enough time to put her hand back in her lap before she went into seizure again.


	3. Differential Diagnosis, People!

"This is _fun,"_ House declared as he led the way into the conference room. Chase looked up, startled, while Cameron and Foreman dragged out chairs.

"You're calling epilepsy fun now?" Foreman asked, sounding like he was kind of disgusted but not completely surprised.

House took up station against the conference room desk and fixed Foreman with his best contemptuous stare. "Sorry, I thought you were my neurologist. Since when do epileptic seizures present with tachycardia? For that matter, since when does someone with no history of epilepsy suddenly have two seizures in less than two hours? What's fun is that it's so clearly _not_ epilepsy."

"Huh, I must have been out of the room while you were running the EEG," Foreman said sourly.

"Fine, be a stickler, but come on. Did that look like _any_ other epileptic seizure you've ever seen? Think carefully."

"I take it we have a new case," Chase said.

"Yes," House said, and watched the shudder run through his tiny staff. It was already nearly six. Cameron, trying to hide it, looked down at the inventory the nurses had done of the contents of the patient's purse--when someone walks into a hospital and immediately goes into convulsions, you check her purse for drugs. She seemed to fix on something as House filled Chase in on the basics.

"How old is she?" Chase asked.

"I dunno," House said cheerfully. "Cameron, you've got her stuff. How old is she?"

"I'm...not sure," Cameron said, sounding even more befuddled than was usual for one of the ducklings.

House made a face of exaggerated disbelief. "You're telling me you can't do math. Come on, Cameron. Two thousand five minus nineteen seventy something equals...?"

"This says she was born in February of 1976," Cameron said.

"So she's coming up on the big three-oh," House said. "What's so tough there?"

"It _also_ says it was issued in February. Of 2006."

"What?" House said. "That can't be right." Cameron held out the photocopy and House snatched it from her. He looked it over, his brows furrowing.

"OK..." he said after a second of contemplation. "Does Pennsylvania do something weird with driver's licenses? No, wait a second. This other one--" he flicked a finger at the image of the patient's insurance card on the same paper. "--this says her health insurance is through Blue _Cross_/Blue _Shield_." Which was cruising for a lawsuit in the worst way; Blue Shield/Blue Cross wasn't going to tolerate that kind of toe-stepping. Which meant...

House clutched the paper to his chest with his eyes half-closed as the realization dawned. "This is _so cool_," he crooned. Foreman had donned one of his vast array of disapproving expressions, the one that said he was wondering whether to get a straitjacket or just move right to tranq guns; Chase, meanwhile, looked disconcertingly as if he understood House's train of thought. "Unexplained seizures are neat enough," House said after taking a moment to revel, "but now we've got a whole wallet full of fake ID too. I love this woman already." He opened his eyes fully and pointed at Chase. "Go! Get me her purse, her clothes, everything. Fast." He clapped his hands. "Quick like bunny, Chase, get moving." Chase, who was already moving, gave him _his _usual look, the put-upon one, and House rolled his eyes in deliberate misinterpretation. "I'm sorry I mentioned rabbits, OK? Just go!"

Cameron caught Chase's eye and mouthed the room number at him; he blinked thanks and hurried out. "OK," House said, ignoring the byplay. "While we're waiting, gimme a list of things that can cause _grand mal_ seizures." He pronounced the old-fashioned phrase with gusto. Foreman opened his mouth and House cut him off, "That aren't epilepsy." He grabbed a marker and uncapped it with a flourish.

"Fever," Cameron said. "But she doesn't have one."

"Hypoglycemia," Foreman said. He sounded reluctant, but House didn't care as long as he participated.

"They tested her blood sugar, she's fine," Cameron replied.

"Meningitis, encephalitis, brain tumor. Stroke." House wrote on the board as Foreman listed conditions.

"She didn't have any head trauma, so that's not it," Cameron said.

"Tapeworm," Foreman said, sounding speculative.

"Tapeworms are boring," House cut in. "Anyway we've already done tapeworms. The universe hates to repeat itself." He listed it anyway.

"Any number of drugs," Cameron said. "Tox screen won't be back for a while yet. But according to the inventory there was nothing in her purse."

"Not having it in her purse doesn't mean she doesn't have anything at home," Foreman pointed out.

House said, "True, but when she woke up she seemed awfully put together for someone who'd had enough evil nasty chemicals to give herself a seizure. And then had a second one. Which might also rule out poisons." He wrote "drugs" and "poison" on the board, but followed each word with a question mark. "What else?"

"Alcohol withdrawal, but with that she'd probably have hallucinations too," Cameron said. "Um, can't whooping cough cause convulsions?"

"Born in 1976, she was vaccinated for whooping cough," Foreman said.

"If she _was_ vaccinated," House pointed out. "Her parents could have been morons--or do I mean hippies? I always get those mixed up."

"Systemic lupus erythematosus," Cameron said. House tried not to groan, if only because now he had to remember how to spell it.

"AIP," Foreman said.

"Twice in three months, Foreman?" House said, a little more sharply than was strictly warranted--he admitted, in the privacy of his own head, that a reminder of his ex's husband's exceedingly rare disease was irritating. In his defense it would have been irritating even if the ex in question hadn't been currently crusing for his liver. He hesitated momentarily over the last few letters of "erythematosus", then wrote up AIP. "What else?"

"Epilepsy," Foreman said firmly.

"What _part_ of 'not epilepsy' slipped past you?" House asked. The man was a good doctor--another thing to be mentioned only inside his skull--but sometimes Foreman got the bit in his teeth and just wouldn't let it go.

"The part where you didn't do an EEG."

"Foreman: tachycardia. You felt her pulse when she went under the second time; it was going so fast _I_ couldn't count it and that means it was at least 134."

"148, by the monitor," Foreman said, though without the note of conceding the point that House was waiting for. "Everyone's different. It could be an idiopathic presentation."

"Have I ever mentioned that I loathe the word idiopathic?" House asked the air. He cocked his head at movement in the hallway: Chase, his arms full of cloth and with a purse dangling from one hand. "In the meantime, we have fake ID to peruse."

* * *

Half an hour later, Allison looked up from the contents of Ms. Siciunas's wallet. "This makes no sense," she declared. The men looked at her with near-identical expressions of annoyance and she stifled a laugh. Before any of them could make a sarcastic remark, she continued, "All these little details." Her wave took in the half-filled "buy ten get one free" card from a coffee shop, the library card, the pure silver dime and quarter that had been tucked behind the driver's license. "Why go to all this trouble?"

"There's such a thing as a spy," Chase said, sounding as if even he didn't believe what he was saying. "They get very detailed backgrounds."

"You watch too much _MI-5_," House scoffed. "Anyway, I see where Cameron's going with this. Why go to so much trouble if you're going to get the details _wrong_?" He picked up the little leather pouch and pulled the comb out of it--the thing looked as if it had been hand-carved. "Why does a spy need a comb made out of--what is this? Bone, antler? Whatever. It's memorable and spies don't want to be memorable." He set the comb down again and held up the silver necklace, letting the star in a circle dangle. "This isn't a Star of David, not enough points. Memorable." The chain hissed against the glass tabletop as he set it down. He poked at the pair of stainless steel rods that Allison thought were hair sticks. "All of this, too memorable. Her check book is filled with transactions rounded up to the next quarter, but none of them have dates later than May fifteenth. So either she went from being anal enough to record a buck seventy-five for breath mints to not caring about her mortgage payment, or she hasn't used her checking since May. Or there's something else going on."

"What _else_ could be going on?" Foreman asked, sounding exasperated. He pushed his chair back from the table and stood. "I'm going to go see if she's hit normal sleep yet. If so I'm running an EEG to confirm epilepsy." He gave House his challenging look, which House neatly deflected by the simple expedient of shrugging.

"Have a good time," their boss said airily. Foreman looked a little lost, like someone who had steeled himself for pain that never came, opened his mouth, closed it again, and went for the door, yanking it with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

House waited until he was gone, and then repeated, in precisely the same tone, "Or there's something else going on."

"I kind of agree with Foreman," Chase said. "I know it doesn't make any sense, but what else _could_ be going on?"

"Amnesia?" Allison said, hating the soap-opera melodrama of it. "She's been out of it since May and being in Pittsburgh is the last thing she remembers. It could be caused by the same thing that's making her seize. _Old_ head trauma."

"That would work if it weren't for the date on the driver's license," House said. "At the moment I'm kind of leaning towards time travel." He sounded entirely too serious and Allison stared at him, aware out of her peripheral vision that Chase was doing it too. He glanced up from the litter of purse contents and grinned. "You two are too easy. When Foreman's done with his EEG, put her through the MRI and look for Cameron's trauma. Get her consent for a paralytic in case she goes into another seizure while she's in the machine."

"She's on an Ativan drip," Allison pointed out.

"Since we don't know what's causing the seizures we don't know if Ativan will help with them," House said.

Chase picked up the driver's license and tapped it against the table. "I hate to say it, but shouldn't we tell the police about this? Fake IDs..."

"If she's got amnesia the fake ID might not be her fault," Allison said.

"And if she's a spy, turning her in could get us all some time in small back rooms," House said, with a little more relish than Allison liked. "Let's figure out what's wrong with her, then we can decide whether to turn her in. In the meantime, we need to find out more about her. For one thing I want to know what 'working for the government' means."

"Yeah...how?" Chase asked. "It's not like we have her records."

"There's this wonderful invention, Chase, it's called the Internet. _Google_ her."

* * *

House having taken himself off somewhere, Chase was given permission to use the computer in his office--albeit with dire warnings about avoiding the Favorites menu on pain of something unspecified but menacing--while Allison opened up her laptop. She had sprung for a wireless card for the machine and could have gotten to the hospital's network from the chair in her boss's office, but she was still a little wary of Chase. Not that their...encounter hadn't been fun, and Allison had gotten over being ashamed of sex a long time ago, but she thought it might be a good idea to let memory fade a bit before spending a lot of time in an enclosed space with him, especially an enclosed space that was about fifty percent windows but had a disarming sense of being secluded.

If for no other reason than she was pretty sure that snogging in House's office would cause an explosion of thermonuclear proportions if he found out about it.

Therefore, her first indication that Chase had better Google-fu than she did was the slightly panicked tone of his voice when he called her name from the other side of the wall. "What?" she said, standing up from the conference room desk.

"The patient," Chase said, swiveling House's monitor as much as he could as she entered the office. "She's _dead."_

"What?" she repeated. "What are you talking about?"

Chase pointed at the screen and said, "Janet Siciunas. Died three days ago in an MVA in Pittsburgh."

"You must have the wrong..." Allison began, but Chase was already shaking his head.

"How many people have _you_ met with that last name?" he said, but she sensed it was a rhetorical question. "It's the right age, the right place, the right description, the right _person_." Allison leaned over his shoulder, conscious of his warmth even through their respective layers of lab coats, and peered at the screen.

"You're right," she said, completely bewildered. "We need to get House."

* * *

Allison couldn't find it in her to object when House ordered the two of them not to tell Foreman about their patient's supposed demise. It was just too damn weird, and Foreman's tolerance for non-medical weird was...low at best.

"Maybe they thought she was dead and the newspaper picked it up, but they managed to save her?" she said, grasping at straws. She knew it was a silly thing to say even before Chase began to object. House had that _look_ on his face, and wasn't really listening.

"If it was _that_ bad, she wouldn't even be walking," Chase pointed out. "Instead she's having seizures five hundred kilometers from where she's supposed to be."

"Foreman won't be done with his EEG for at least an hour," House said, snapping out of his trance with the usual abruptness. "Then I want her MRI. In the meantime I need to think about this." When they didn't move instantaneously he glared at them and said, in a tone of exaggerated patience, "That means get out."

They went.

* * *

**Notes:** Just in case you're wondering, systemic lupus erythematosus _can_ cause seizures--I didn't toss that in just for the joke. Then again, some type or other of lupus can cause just about _anything_, which is one of the reasons they diagnose it so often. They don't call the falling-down-and-convulsing kind of seizures _grand mal_ much anymore, alas, but House is the kind of guy who'd use the phrase just because it's cool. 


	4. Alarums and Excursions

As soon as Cameron and Chase were out of eyeshot, House fished the patient's cell phone from his desk drawer and thumbed it open. About halfway through her address book he hit paydirt, in the form of a listing labeled "Me" which included both home and work numbers. He punched the home number into his desk phone.

It rang. House started waiting for an answering machine but didn't get one. In the middle of the eleventh ring, someone picked up and barked, "What!" at him.

The voice was male and sounded a little off--flustered or angry, which certainly went with the "greeting". House grinned at nothing and put on his most unctuous voice.

"This is Doctor Gregory House at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey," he said, and waited. There was a short pause and then, sounding a little wary, the man said, "Um, OK. What can I do for you, Dr. House?" He sounded slightly appeased, but still a little strange. Sounded, in fact, like he'd been crying, now that House had a little more to go on.

Interesting.

"We have a patient here we can't identify, and your number was in her cell phone," House improvised wildly, since the man hadn't given him anything to go on. "By your first name, Mister...?"

"Cutler," he replied. House made a little triumphal gesture as Cutler continued, "If you can describe her, I'll see what I can do."

"Certainly, certainly," House said. "Let's see. Five-three, a hundred and sixty-four pounds, white with auburn hair, a little less than waist length, green eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and if you'll pardon my saying so she's a D-cup. Ring any bells?"

There was a much longer pause and then, his tone noticeably colder, Cutler asked, "Does she have two moles on her right cheek, just under her eye?"

House squinted at the driver's license picture. There was a blur under the eye that was at least one mole, so... "Yes," he said. "Does that mean you--"

"Gregory House, Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, New Jersey?" Cutler said over him.

"Yes," House said, and tossed the license back onto his desk.

"I'll call you right back," the other man said, and before House could protest there was a click.

_Very_ interesting.

House stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Ten minutes later he was muttering about how long could it take to check the damn caller ID when his office door swung open just enough to admit Wilson's head. "Still here, House?" his friend asked, putting on overdone surprise.

"Yes," House said shortly. "Come on, come on come on!" Wilson seemed to take this as an invitation, and stepped into the office.

"I hear you have a patient," Wilson said, settling himself into the visitor's chair as if he intended to homestead there. House glanced up at him and fought down the pointed question about what a married man was doing at work at nearly seven anyway. "Must be fascinating to drag you away from _Firefly_."

"My TiVo elves will record it for me," House said. "This is more interesting." The phone stubbornly continued to not ring.

"More interesting than Jewel Stait's ass?" Wilson asked skeptically.

"Unexplained seizures," House said. "Got my _medical_ elves to dig up info on the patient and it turns out that she's from Pittsburgh. And also she's dead." A thought struck him. "You can't see her ass in that jumpsuit anyway--Kaylee's ass. Not the patient. I haven't even _seen_ her ass. And _unlike _Jewel Stait's ass, I can get my hands on the seizures. Or at least the patient."

"The...dead patient," Wilson said, his eyebrows headed for the stratosphere.

"Google thinks she's dead," House explained. "_I_ think she's off having a completely pointless EEG because Foreman's too stubborn to admit epilepsy doesn't cause tachycardia."

"Is that why you're watching your phone like you expect it to make a break for freedom?" Wilson asked.

"No, I'm waiting for the phone because the patient's boyfriend promised to call me back." As if on cue, the phone rang. House pounced on it.

"House," he said, slapping the speaker phone button.

"Now that we've established that you are who you say you are," Cutler said, "do you mind telling me what the hell's going on? Janet can't be your patient, she's dead." Wilson leaned forward in his seat, looking intrigued.

House debated with himself, but not for very long. "The woman I've got here is pretty alive," he said. "So sorry to have bothered you." It was time to prod the boyfriend (House's money was on "boyfriend", though "longtime fiancé" was also in the running) into giving him something to work with.

Sure enough, Cutler snapped, "Wait!" at him. House paused long enough to feign lifting a phone back to his ear--Wilson rolled his eyes, but House ignored it--and said, "I'm so sorry to have bothered you in your time of grief."

"Bullshit," Cutler said succinctly. "The woman at the desk was delighted to tell me my fiancée was a patient there, Dr. House, and what I want is for you to explain to me how that's possible. Seeing as she drove over a hundred-foot cliff three days ago. The nurse was also delighted to tell me about _you_. So if this is some kind of joke, I'll just be calling my lawyer."

Well that explained why it had taken the man so long to get back to him. Some of the nurses would go on for hours about House's supposed perfidy if they weren't stopped. Wilson was now giving him the _I don't put it past you _Look as well, so House shrugged and decided to go for straight truth.

"No joke," he said. "She's here, she's alive. I can fax you a copy of her driver's license if you want."

"So the thing about not being able to identify her...?"

"I was lying," House admitted. "Something really weird is going on here and I wanted to see if you knew about it."

"Weird," Cutler said, sounding grim, "is one word for it." He paused again, and House could almost hear him thinking. "What's the middle name on that license?"

House plucked it out of Wilson's offering hand. "Leigh," he said.

"Right," Cutler said. "It'll take me about five hours to get there." And he hung up again.

As the office filled with the drone of the dial tone, Wilson sat back in his chair again. He looked as baffled as House felt, which seemed somehow unfair since House had so much more to be baffled _about_. He hung up the phone absently.

Finally Wilson said, "Five hours from Pittsburgh? He's planning to push it."

"Yeah," House said. They sat and contemplated that for a moment.

"You rule out brain tumor yet?"

"No films till Foreman's done with his EEG and they can get her in the machine."

"At least you won't have to fight for MRI time."

"Yeah."

The silence stretched out. House could feel his brain trying to poke all the little pieces into some sort of rational order, but it was failing. He hardly noticed when Wilson stood up.

"I'm thinking not so much with the beer and movies tonight, then," Wilson said.

"Patient."

"Right." House didn't answer, half-aware of the tolerant sigh. "Call me if it's a brain tumor," Wilson said. House nodded absently, already reaching for his iPod.

* * *

Allison went to drop off the MRI films in House's office while Chase got their patient back to her room. Ms. Siciunas was still asleep, and Allison was starting to worry about it, but she knew quite well that making her boss wait was inadvisable. Foreman was going to take first shift on wakeup watch, on the excuse that he was the neurologist, though Allison was pretty sure it was because he didn't want to be around for the gloating about the perfectly normal EEG.

When she got to the door, House was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, feet on his desk and something Allison didn't recognize booming from his iPod's speakers. "--_it's made me what I am! I'm damaged, and I like it--" _the singer proclaimed, louder than she felt comfortable shouting over, so she crossed the room to poke the films into House's shoulder. He was, at least, not asleep, because his eyes flicked open as soon as the films touched him. She was used to the blue intensity of those eyes by now, and had gotten good at keeping her shudder purely internal.

"Ah, my minion returns," House said, reaching for the iPod to turn it off, cutting the singer off in the midst of averring that he lived for rock 'n roll. The silence that descended rang in Allison's ears. "Where are the rest of my minions?" he demanded as he waved his hand at the light box. "Put those up."

"Chase is taking Janet back to her room. Foreman's going to do the first shift waiting for her to wake up," Allison said as she complied.

"You're on a first-name basis with her already?" House asked. "She was awake for all of ten minutes."

"It's easier to say than 'Siciunas'," Allison replied mildly. The riposte had the advantage of being true. She flicked on the light and the inside of Ms. Siciunas's head sprang into relief.

"You can't marry this one, even if we fix her head," House said. He had to use his hands to get his right foot to the floor, Allison noted, but she knew better than to comment on it. "Unless you go to Canada. Now that I think about it, she kinda looks like you, it could be totally hot." He gave her a sidelong leer, which she ignored with the ease of long practice, and then turned his attention to the films.

Allison looked at them too, hoping to spot whatever she _had _to be missing before he could point it out. Whatever it was, Chase hadn't seen it and neither had Foreman, but that didn't necessarily mean much, not with House.

There was a long pause. When House finally spoke, he would have seemed perfectly normally cranky to anyone who hadn't been working with him for a year and a half. To Allison's trained ear, however, he sounded the least little bit unsettled. "These're clear," he said shortly, and turned to settle himself back in his chair. "What'd the tox screen say?"

"That was clear too," Allison said slowly. "So was the EEG."

"I told Foreman it wasn't epilepsy," House said, but he didn't sound as gleeful as he should have.

Allison's pager went off and she checked it.

"She's awake," she said.

House nodded at the door. "Go talk to her."

* * *

**Notes:** The song is Blue Oyster Cult's "Damaged", which I picked purely because I like it, though I realized after I got it in that the chorus at least is kind of scarily apropos for House. And yes, I am aware that _Firefly_'s lamentably short run was in 02-03; all will become clear (I hope). 


	5. I Play One on TV

Cameron had been gone less than fifteen minutes when House's pager went off in its turn. _Patient's room stat -Cam_ it said. House was a little reluctant to leave in case the boyfriend/fiancé called back, but that was what voicemail was for. As he went through the process of clambering to his feet he puzzled over what Cameron might need him for--he wasn't going to be much use if the patient was just crashing or seizing again and he _certainly _wasn't useful if the woman wanted to talk.

The puzzle kept him busy all the way there and only deepened when he got near the room and discovered Cameron standing outside it, clenched as tightly as he'd ever seen her and almost as pale as she'd been after Parasite Boy coughed on her. Which was not a comforting thought--what in hell had _this_ one exposed her to? He worked too hard to get his minions properly trained to risk losing them to idiot patients. House made certain to bury any expression of concern lest Cameron see it.

"What did she say _this _time?" House demanded as soon as he was close enough.

Cameron muttered, "She asked Foreman to leave and then wanted to know what season it was."

"Why did you feel the need to page me about a new symptom when it's really an old symptom we already suspected? Amnesia--"

"She said she didn't mean that kind of season," Cameron said. House was still drawing breath to ask what that was supposed to mean when Cameron continued, "Just...she wants to talk to you. I think you should talk to her."

House studied his underling intently. She didn't look terrified the way she had after the blood thing (she'd done a great job of hiding it; Foreman and Chase hadn't even noticed), just very confused. "You're not making any sense," he said, to see what she'd do.

"I know that," she said, meeting his eyes squarely. "Talk to _her_."

* * *

House slid the door shut behind him and took up station at the foot of the patient's bed. It had taken him a long time to develop a way of standing that he could maintain and that looked bored enough for this kind of encounter. 

The patient didn't say anything, even when he stared at her. He was pretty sure she knew what he was trying to do--most people would have broken and started babbling minutes ago, but she just kept looking at him. She did look a lot like Cameron, except for being more than six inches around. House gave himself a mental shake to banish the irrelevant thought.

After a while, deciding that the battle of wills was less important than getting this show on the road already, he said, "I was told you wanted to talk to me."

She gave him the barest hint of a smile and said, "Yeah, but I didn't want you to think you could psych me out with the intense-stare routine."

Which was about the third time she'd said something that sounded like she knew House or some member of his team, and it was starting to seriously weird him out. She hadn't been awake enough for any of the usual faith-healer or ghost-channeler tricks, had she? Maybe she'd been setting them up? But no, he'd seen her unresponsive to pain in the seizure, and that was _not_ something you could fake.

"Look," House said, with an unnerving and unfamiliar feeling that he wasn't in control of this conversation, "you convinced Cameron to page me up here. And I know Cameron's a sucker for the puppy-dog eyes, but she's also scared of me. So talk."

"I'm pretty sure I can," she said. "I talked to Cameron without it happening again, so I think I can do this. God, I think I'm stuck here."

"I'm not giving you a psych referral till we figure out the seizures," House said.

The patient visibly pulled herself together. "I don't _think_ there are going to be any more seizures," she said.

"Do you _think_ you know what's wrong with you?" House asked as skeptically as he could manage.

"I think I was having them because my brain couldn't deal with being here," she said.

"You're allergic to hospitals?" Not the dumbest thing House had ever seen someone convince herself of, granted, but pretty silly.

"Not here-the-hospital," she said, a little impatient. "Here..._here_. This whole place." Her gesture seemed to take in not just the room or the hospital but the entire world. House said nothing, waiting for her to start making sense. She blew out her cheeks. "OK, I'm doing this backwards. OK. I'm going to tell you something that no one but you should know, and when I'm done I'm going to tell you a few more things that haven't happened yet. OK?"

Well. Frigging nuts was a new symptom, but House was willing to play along for the sake of curiosity. He nodded at her and she squared her shoulders a little.

"The night after Cuddy asked you about Stacy coming back to work at the hospital and you said yes," she said. House stared at her. How the hell did she...oh. Apparently she _had_ had time for the faith-healer trick. Irritation must have shown on his face because she cocked her head at him, puzzled, and he said, "Excuse me, I need to go _kill _my subordinate. I'll be right back." He hefted his cane in illustration.

"Cameron didn't tell me," the patient said, and he noticed for the first time that she called his subordinate "Cameron" just like he did, which was sufficiently weird that he stopped moving. "Just...just listen for a second and don't be a stubborn bastard, OK?" House looked at her, stretching every sense he had for any hint of deception. He found nothing. So he set his cane back down and leaned on it and made his facial muscles go slack so he wouldn't react no matter what new craziness she came out with.

"You were at home. You were standing at the fireplace. You filled up your glass with scotch and set the bottle on the mantle, shot what was in the glass and put it next to the bottle. You picked up your cane, played with it for a few seconds, then tossed it over to the couch." He was pretty sure he wasn't gaping, but that was the best that could be said for him. "You stood there trying to get your balance and then you tried to take a step. Halfway through your leg gave out and you fell. You caught yourself on your leather chair. It took a few seconds to get back onto the piano bench. You only had one pill left--Vicodin, not the amphetamines Chase and Foreman found in Mark's desk. You tossed it up in the air and caught it in your mouth." She paused and sighed. "I'm not sure if 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' was actually playing, or if that was just incidental music."

House had always prided himself on taking things in stride--sick joke though that phrase was, in the post-infarction era. But this was just a little too much. There was, literally, no way she could have known about that; even his windows hadn't been uncovered enough to have let anyone see what he'd been doing that night. It was what he'd done to be stupid in place of his first impulse, which had been to find a cheap bar and make himself obnoxious until he found someone willing to take a swing at a cripple. The caneless step had hurt (more than his leg usually hurt), and had set off a spasm later that woke him gasping at 3 am, but at least it hadn't gotten him admitted, which the bar fight likely would have.

"That's all I know," the patient said. "About that night. That's all they _filmed_." He could hear the bitterness she laced into that word, even through his roaring astonishment. "But I can tell you other things. You told Stacy you knew about her smoking while you were trying to catch Steve McQueen. You told the Mother Superior that nuns can have nice breasts, and you told Sister Eucharist that her fifth deadly sin was lust. Bill Arnello told you in the elevator that he'd take away everything you loved if you didn't save Joey. When Vogler confronted you about Carly's heart transplant and told you not to play games, you said, 'No, this is more like we're dancing right now'. I can go on, but I'd rather not."

House groped for words in his astonishment and found them in anger. "How do you know these things?" he demanded. He advanced on her, half-aware that he was brandishing his cane like a weapon. "_How?"_ He stopped next to the head of the bed and tried to loom over her.

"I...God, how do I explain this?" she said, looking uncertain at last.

"I don't know, that's _your _job," he snarled. "Make it quick."

She looked down at her lap again, but he didn't think she was afraid of him. "Where I'm from..." she said. "Where I'm from there's a TV show."

"How nice for you!" House said, his voice rising with every word. He was going to get answers from her if he had to go break out the sodium pentathol, and he barely resisted the urge to punctuate his words by banging his cane on something.

"It's about _you_," she burst out, and when she met his eyes he could see that hers were full of tears but blazing with belief. "I'm not _from _here, I'm from a place where all this is a set in California somewhere. _House_ is in its third season, I think Hugh Laurie is sexy, and I want to go _home_ but as long as I'm stuck in TV Plot Land I thought I'd try and do some good here. Is that _OK_ with you, Doctor House?"

House waited, but she just kept staring at him, breathing a little ragged. Finally he said, "There's a TV show about me...starring that guy from _Blackadder_?" Which would explain why she wanted to know what season it was, he realized with something like panic. She wanted to know where they were in the show's continuity. Which was absolutely nuts, so he refused to think about it.

"Yeah," she said. "He does a fabulous American accent, though his Rs are a little weak in the first few episodes." All the fight went out of her and she sighed again and closed her eyes against the tears that were starting to overflow. "I want to go home. But as long as I'm here..."

"As long as you're here," House said, layering sarcasm onto his tone to keep up appearances, "you can tell me what good you were planning to do by demonstrating you know more about me than my own damn _mother_ knows."

"That was just so you'd believe me when I told you the next part," she said, opening her eyes again. Her earnest gaze was uncomfortably like Cameron's, even down to the gold-tinged green. "Two things: Stacy really will leave Mark if you keep chasing her, so don't chase unless you're really willing to change for her. And when Tritter comes in to the clinic, be polite."

House latched on to the only part of that statement he could deal with--Stacy was furious and the patient's omniscience was clearly broken--and asked, "Who the hell is Tritter?" There was still a corner of his brain that was sneering that he couldn't actually be _believing_ this utter bullshit, could he, but it was being rapidly outshouted by the parts that were lining up all the things she couldn't possibly have known with the fact that she manifestly did know them.

"He's a cop. He won't be in for almost a year. He'll have chafing from chewing nicotine gum and whacking off too much, but he'll think it's an STD. Be polite to him, no matter how much it hurts."

"What the hell are you talking about?" House asked, a feeling of disappointment overcoming him at being so repetitive. He consoled himself with the sheer weirdness of her revelations--it'd knock anyone for a loop.

"About a year from now, you'll get a patient in the clinic named Michael Tritter," she said patiently. "He's a cop. He'll complain about how long he had to wait, because he's an idiot. The reason he's in a free clinic instead of going to his own doctor is because he'll think he has an STD. It'll actually be that he's been chewing stop-smoking gum and spending too much time dating Rosy Palm. _Be polite to him_." She said this last with uncomfortable intensity.

"Why should I believe anything you say?" House demanded. He'd gotten his mental feet back under him and that meant disbelief was creeping back in around the edges. Someone had talked--Cameron, Chase, Wilson, _someone_.

She grabbed his forearm and locked eyes with him. "Because if you don't, Tritter will go after Wilson."

"Leave Wilson out of this," House growled at her.

He wasn't prepared for her to close her eyes and tilt her head back, doing a pantomime of exasperation he felt like he should applaud or something--it sorted oddly with the tears still drying on her face, but she made it work. "You know what?" she said. "Fine. Forget I said anything. I tried. My conscience is clear." She let go of his forearm and scrubbed her hand up and down on her blanket as if it were dirty. "If you don't mind, doctor, I need to get some sleep," she said, sounding perfectly normal though it was ridiculous since she'd been asleep for most of the day, but House wasn't really someone who could complain about other people's avoidance tactics.

House stared at her for almost a minute before he turned to leave.

* * *

As he closed the door, House realized that Cameron was hovering. Of _course_ Cameron was hovering. And this was one of the rare moments when he really felt as if the unpleasant thing needed to be dealt with immediately, so he jerked his head at her in the "follow me" way and headed for the nearest waiting area. 

Neither of them spoke till they got there. House took the time to get himself situated in his chair, and waved Cameron into another. The halls were sparsely populated, but he kept his voice down anyway.

"OK," he said at last. "What did she tell _you_?"

Cameron looked at her clasped hands in her lap in an odd echo of the patient's earlier posture. "She...she told me I don't have HIV," she said, her voice even softer than usual. "And that when Foreman gets sick, it's _Naegleria._"

Impatient, House shook his head. "What did she tell you to get you to rope _me_ in there?" he asked.

"The time I told you about Brian," Cameron said. Her voice was starting to shake, but House found himself disinclined to make fun of her for it. "'Very sad, an uncalibrated centrifuge'," she quoted at him, managing a ghost of a smile. "Did she tell you how she knows these things?" she asked, and House found one more thing to be surprised about.

"She didn't tell you?" Cameron shook her head silently. "She told me that 'where she's from' there's a TV show about me--about us." He made an encompassing gesture with his left hand and tried to pull a face to show Cameron how idiotic he thought it all was. He wasn't sure she bought it, which was fair because he wasn't sure he bought it himself. It was all getting too weird. If Cameron had been the one who'd told the patient all the things she knew, his fellow was a _much _better actress than he'd ever suspected, and anyway Cameron didn't _know_ most of the things the patient had told him. The problem was, neither did anyone else.

"That...doesn't make any sense," Cameron said.

"No kidding," he said. "But neither does anything else about this woman." What _really_ scared him was that what the woman had told him explained so much--everything except why she was supposed to be dead.

"She's insane," Cameron said. "Not making sense is usually a symptom."

House tapped his cane thoughtfully against the floor, deciding the tone of voice--she'd almost managed snarky--meant that Cameron was getting a grip on herself. This was risky. He looked back up at his fellow and asked, "Did she seem insane to you?"

Cameron gave him the look she usually reserved for moments when he'd just told her to do something she thought was immoral: surprised and just a little hurt. It gave him a little pang, which he quickly quashed--for once he hadn't done anything to deserve it. Anyway this was important.

"I mean it," House persisted. "Did she seem crazy, or just...stressed out?"

Cameron hesitated before she said, "She didn't seem crazy."

House nodded and tapped the floor again. "I talked to her boyfriend," he said. "He agrees with Google that she's dead. Said she drove over a cliff." There was a pause.

"She didn't ask us to call him," Cameron said suddenly. House made a "go on" eyebrow at her. "If you woke up in the hospital, wouldn't you want to talk to your girlfriend?" Cameron asked. "So why didn't she ask us to call him? Does she know he thinks she's dead?"

House turned that over in his mind. It didn't fit into the picture he had reluctantly been constructing, which was nice because that picture...well, if he was going to be honest with himself, it frightened him. "Good question," he said. "Go ask her."

Cameron nodded and House watched her pull on her doctor face. It was a very good doctor face, he had to admit. "Make sure to tell her he's coming to see her," he said. "He should be here around midnight." Cameron nodded again as she stood up.

* * *

When Allison stepped into the room, Ms. Siciunas snapped, "I mean it, House, I'm trying to sleep." Then she opened her eyes. "Oh. Dr. Cameron. I'm sorry--I thought--"

Allison smiled and said, "It's all right. He...can have that effect on people." Ms. Siciunas smiled back briefly, but then sobered.

"Look, I'm sorry if I upset you before," she said. "I just wanted to help."

Allison tried not to let her smile freeze, but she had that feeling again that Ms. Siciunas had caught what she hadn't said. It made a strange sort of sense--but Allison was trying very hard not to think about the things this woman knew or how she might know them. "It's fine," she said. "I wanted to ask you if there was anyone we should call. To let them know where you are."

Ms. Siciunas shook her head. "Not here, I don't think," she said softly. "I mean, I don't think there's anyone...no. There's no one you need to call."

Allison took a deep breath. "Are you sure? Dr. House said he talked to--"

"Talked to?" Ms. Siciunas asked sharply. "Talked to who? Someone who knew me?" She closed her eyes and started to bang her head gently against her pillow. "God. I really _am_ crazy."

"I'm sure you're fine," Allison said, though she wasn't sure how reassuring it sounded. "Dr. House said to tell you that your boyfriend was on his way." Ms. Siciunas froze.

There was a very long pause, and then she opened her eyes again. She stared at Allison with uncomfortable intensity.

"That...he...no. _No_. Pete's dead."

* * *

**Notes:** House's thoughts about what else he could have done to be stupid were inspired by the "leaked" sides for "The Honeymoon" in which he does indeed go to a bar and get into a fight--see sydedalus's excellent (if unfinished) "Some Days Are Worse Than Others" for another take on it. 


	6. Holding Pattern

In retrospect, House supposed he should have warned Cameron about the patient's theory as to the cause of the seizures. Not that he gave it any credence in the sense of it being about reality (it was impossible, it had to be impossible), but people _could_ do amazing things to themselves if they just believed it enough and confronting the woman with more evidence that this was "TV Plot Land" probably hadn't been the smartest thing ever.

Fortunately they didn't have to actually _use_ the defibrillator. Her heart picked up on its own even as they were getting the machine into the room.

When everything had calmed down and the nurses were out of the room, House looked at Cameron and Cameron looked back, steady and calm. Dealing with the crisis had let her get her bearings again, he could tell, and he admired her for it.

"I found out why she didn't ask us to call her boyfriend," Cameron said after a while. There was a hint of a smile on her lips. She was planning to make him guess. So House thought it over, picked the most improbable option, and said, "She thinks he's dead?"

His fellow's silence was answer enough, and House sighed. Somehow he didn't feel as triumphant as he really should have for once again demonstrating that his underlings couldn't hide things from him. "Where's Chase?" he asked, to cover his confusion.

"He and Foreman went to get dinner. They should be back soon," Cameron replied, looking as grateful as he was for the distraction.

"They better bring us something," House grumbled. He set off down the hall, turning when he realized Cameron wasn't following him.

"Someone should stay with her," Cameron said. Which was an admirable sentiment (if you were into stuffed toys and rainbows), but.

"Don't worry about it. She'll be out for hours." Cameron hesitated, so House rolled his eyes at her. "You'll think better if you have blood sugar. Then you can fix her even quicker. Come on." As a sop to her sentiment, he knocked on the nurse's station with his cane as he passed it and tossed out a quick order to page them if anything changed. He was most of the way to the corner before he heard her quick steps behind him; she fell into his halting rhythm with an ease second only to Wilson's.

House resisted the urge to smile at her. She'd think he was going soft.

* * *

They didn't speak on the way to the Diagnostics office, but Allison found she didn't mind. It was strange to be so comfortable with House; the feeling of cameraderie had been essentially absent since...well, it had been months. It was possible the monster truck rally had been the last time she'd felt at really ease around him. It had certainly been before the advent of Mark and Stacy--before she'd made the spectacular mistake of telling him she was happy for him. She still winced, thinking about it; telling the poor man she could see he was in love with a married woman was not, now that she'd thought about it, the kindest thing she'd ever done. At the time she'd still been smarting from the little speech on need he'd given her on their disasterous date, and it had seemed like the kind of thing he'd respect if not like. In retrospect, it had been cruel and childish. 

When they got to their office, Allison was relieved to see that Chase and Foreman were back and had indeed brought enough food for four. And they'd even moved Ms. Siciunas's things off the conference table.

House was talking even as he shouldered the door open. "You better have gotten me mu shu pork," he said. Chase wordlessly slid one of the white cardboard containers in House's direction with the tips of his chopsticks.

Around a mouthful of his broccoli beef, Foreman asked, "Who's with the patient?"

"She's out again. The nurses are keeping an eye on her," House said carelessly as he lowered himself into a chair. "Where are the pancakes? You can't expect me to eat mu shu pork without the pancakes." Allison, sorting through the litter of boxes, cheap chopsticks and soy sauce packets, extracted the foil-wrapped package and tossed it to him. He caught it neatly out of the air.

"Again?" Foreman said. "She have another seizure or is she sleeping?"

"Another seizure," Allison said as she found her food.

"Just to make it more fun, this time the tachycardia almost killed her, " House said. He poured nearly a third of the contents of his container onto a pancake and began the hopeless task of trying to wrap it well enough to get it to his mouth.

"She went into arrest," Allison expanded. Chase and Foreman looked suitably worried. "Her heart picked back up on its own after less than ten seconds. We didn't even get the cart all the way into the room."

"The tachycardia bugs me," Chase said. He picked one of his dumplings out of the box and squeezed hot mustard onto it. Allison repressed a shudder. "Maybe it's not a neurological problem at all. Maybe it's something in her heart."

House said something completely incomprehensible around a huge mouthful of mu shu pork; they all waited while he chewed, swallowed and repeated himself. "Heart problems causing seizures, Chase? Creative, but--how do I put this?--_stupid_."

"Not necessarily," Chase said, and launched into an elaborate theory that involved misrouted nerve impulses. Allison addressed herself to her food as House toyed with Chase. She could tell House's heart was only half in it, though she doubted Chase or Foreman noticed. Then again, neither of the other two had heard what Ms. Siciunas had said. But none of what the woman knew changed the fact that she'd had three seizures with no explanation, and that the third one had nearly killed her. Though...

"What if it's self-induced?" Allison said, a little louder than she'd intended, right into the middle of House impugning Chase's intelligence by way of his hairstyle. They all stared at her. She stuck her chopsticks into her rice, caught House wincing, pulled them out again to lay them across the top of the container. "What if she's having some sort of psychological stress and her brain is dealing with it by firing randomly?"

"OK," Foreman said slowly. "What kind of stress?" Allison opened her mouth to answer and then remembered that they weren't telling Foreman about the whole dead thing. House came to her rescue.

"Chase found out she was in an MVA a few days ago," he said casually. "She told Cameron her boyfriend's dead."

"He could have died in the crash, and she's not even hurt," Foreman said, fitting it together. "Survivor guilt. It'd have to be pretty extreme to cause this kind of effect, though."

"Some people just have to be the center of attention," House said loftily.

"Yeah, you wouldn't know anything about that," Foreman said. "Anyway, if that's it there's not much we can do beyond keeping her on the Ativan and hoping it does a better job next time."

"There are other anticonvulsants," Chase pointed out.

"True," House said. "Got a whole pharmacy chock full of 'em." He stuffed the last of his pancake into his mouth and got up, hobbling the few steps to the whiteboard without his cane. He grabbed the eraser and wiped out most of the entries, leaving AIP and lupus standing alone. "Someone get an ANA for lupus," he said. "Then two of you can go home. I don't care who stays, draw straws or whatever you do." As he spoke he was loading Chinese takeout cartons--including Chase's cashew chicken--into his left arm. He grabbed his cane and lurched towards his office. Over his shoulder he said, "Whoever stays, let me know when the boyfriend gets here."

"I thought you said the boyfriend was dead," Foreman protested.

House paused in his office door. "I said she _told Cameron_ he was dead. If so, the phones in the afterlife get great reception." He pushed through his office door and vanished behind the wall.

Allison made an apologetic face at Foreman. "House spoke to him," she said.

"I guess he doesn't have to actually _be_ dead, as long as she thinks he is," Foreman said reluctantly. He sat back in his chair and sighed. "OK," he said. "Let's dig out the straws."

* * *

**Notes**: I'm not entirely certain if this is morphing into House/Cameron; I don't generally like the pairing, but I've seen it done well lately and that may be leaking in around the edges. I'll keep you posted. 


	7. No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

When she was done with the tests Allison tidied the lab quickly, trying to keep herself distracted. Chase and Foreman had teased her about volunteering to stay, so she'd fallen back on telling them reproachfully that Janet was _her patient_, not just House's. They'd given her tolerant looks--there's Cameron, caring again--but had at least stopped teasing. Allison smiled a little as her hands went about their work; she wasn't entirely unaware of how the others saw her and wasn't above playing it up on occasion when it suited her purposes.

The truth was, she didn't want to go home. At home there wouldn't be anything to keep her busy and keep her from thinking about the patient. Keep her from thinking about the patient in a non-medical way, she amended, because of course she was supposed to be thinking about her seizures and what might be causing them. And not about anything else. Like how on earth she'd known about the centrifuge...

Allison caught herself paused in the middle of rearranging a rack of chemicals and gave herself a mental shake. This was not helpful. She finished what she was doing, picked up her folder, and left the lab.

It was late; visiting hours were long over and the halls were quiet. Allison kept her mind busy with medicine and the sound of her heels tapping on the floor until she got back to House's office. She opened the door and was already drawing breath to speak when her train of thought jarred to a halt; House wasn't in there. Neither was his iPod, which ruled out a trip to the men's room, and there was still rice left which meant he wasn't in the cafeteria. So either he was walking to help himself think, or he was in the patient's room.

Allison didn't feel like wandering the halls trying to guess his path, so she put her money on Janet's room (Allison wasn't certain when the transition to given name had happened, but she was obscurely grateful; even in her head "Janet" was easier to say). She took a second to scribble a Post-It--_Tests back negative, went to room Cam_--in case he was just out walking and stuck it to his computer screen. Then she detoured back through the conference room to grab her book.

* * *

The nurses stopped talking when they saw Allison coming, which meant they'd been discussing her, House, or both. The gossip network was well-developed in every hospital she'd ever been associated with, but the PPTH rumor mill was close to being a wonder of the world; for a few weeks there it had seemed like everyone she talked to knew that she'd had a date with House. 

The thought of that night was still painful, but she couldn't always stop herself prodding it. In hindsight it was so clear that she'd gone about everything the wrong way. Trotting out Freudian theory, for heaven's sake! As if any real person, let alone House, were that simple. It was no wonder he'd gone on the attack, and after that she'd hardly been able to speak, let alone tell him he was wrong.

If she hadn't loved Brian at first sight, at least she'd wanted him by the end of their first date. And then he'd been diagnosed, and somehow she'd known she couldn't save him, couldn't_ fix_ him, but she could make his last months better. So she did. And along the way she'd gotten as much of him as she could. Allison had always thought it was a fair trade.

None of which was terribly relevant right now, so Allison pushed it to the back of her mind with practiced ease as she slid the door to Janet's room open. House was sitting in the visitor's chair, iPod firmly in place. But his eyes were open, and he glanced in her direction and reached into his pocket to turn the device off as she stepped towards him.

"I tested for AIP as well," she said softly. "They were both negative."

House shrugged and took the folder from her, flipped it open and glanced at the results. "It's never lupus anyway," he said, trying to sound casual. But Allison could see that his gaze had already slipped back to their sleeping patient.

"I can take over here, if you want to go back to your office," Allison said.

"I want to talk to her when she wakes up," House said. "Go get yourself another chair, we'll have a sleepover."

"As long as you don't freeze my bra," Allison said.

"Can I at least braid your hair?" he whined. Allison shot him an amused glance as she walked to the door and caught a nurse's attention. Negotiations for a second chair took only a moment.

"It's not like I can braid yours," she said, leaning against the wall.

House feigned being mortally wounded, though she could tell his heart was only half in it. "You can paint my toenails instead," he said.

"Done," Allison said promptly. House gave her a small smile before he turned his attention back to Janet. That look fell over him, the one that said he wouldn't hear a passing brass band even if it were playing the 1812 Overture complete with cannons; Allison smiled herself and opened her book while she waited for the nurse to get there with a chair.

* * *

It was maybe an hour later when House finally stirred in his seat. "Cameron," he said. 

Allison looked up from her book to find that House was staring at her. He looked uncharacteristically serious. She tucked her bookmark in and set the book back down in her lap. Truth be told she hadn't been doing a great job of reading anyway.

Once he had her attention House seemed to lose momentum. He looked away and reached for his cane so he could tap it restlessly on the floor. After a moment he said, "The things she told me...all of them were true. They were all things she couldn't have known."

Allison thought that over for a second. As scary as it was, she couldn't come up with anything short of the lab being bugged that would have allowed Janet to know about Brian and the uncalibrated centrifuge. So either the lab _was_ bugged...

"I don't even know how she knew about the HIV scare," Allison confessed.

"But you feel better, don't you?" House asked. He met her eyes again. "You believe her when she says you don't have it."

Allison nodded slowly. "I guess I do," she said.

"If she's right about that," House said, and seemed to consider it a complete statement.

"Yeah," Allison said. Silence fell between them for a moment, broken only by the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the tapping of House's cane, making a rhythm Allison almost recognized.

"She told you 'when Foreman gets sick'," House said. "Sounds like a prediction to me."

"Yeah," Allison said again.

"And she's right about the things in the past." House sounded almost resigned. He leaned back in his chair and started twirling his cane between his fingers like a baton. The extra weight of the handle forced him to hold it a little off-center. Allison waited to see where he was going with this.

He executed a particularly fancy twirl and caught the cane. He seemed to have come to some sort of decision, but Allison couldn't tell what about.

House set the cane down again and rested his hands on it. Looking steadily at the opposite wall, he said, "She told me...Stacy would leave Mark for me if I pushed it." Allison blinked at him, unsure what shocked her more: that Janet had said such a thing, that House appeared to believe it, or that he was telling _her_. "The problem is, Stacy knew me before." Allison didn't bother asking before what; with House there was only one "before" that mattered. "And even then. She told me she was lonely with me, that with Mark there was room for her."

Allison stared at House's profile, utterly at sea. "Why...why are you telling me this?"

"If I got Stacy back," he said. Words seemed to fail him for a moment, then he gathered his composure. "I wouldn't change for her. If she couldn't be happy with me the way I am...I don't change for people, Cameron. You have to understand that." His lips quirked in a tiny smile. "I yam what I yam."

Allison hesitated, torn. Because if he was saying what she thought he was saying, this was probably the only chance she'd ever get. But if he wasn't...the possibilities for torment were endless, and this was House; if he was playing with her and she fell into his trap, he'd be utterly merciless. But he wasn't looking at her, and if it were a joke or a ploy he'd want to watch to see how she was reacting...

The moment stretched, and just as it was on the verge of slipping away entirely Allison said, "No one's asking you to change."

At last House turned to look at her again, with that peculiarly diagnostic stare. She sat still for it as well as she could, feeling like he was reading her thoughts. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for and he nodded.

"Don't scare me like that, Cameron," House said. "I thought I was gonna have to spell it out." Allison laughed a little. Something dug into her side and she realized she was leaning over the arm of her chair, which might have embarrassed her had House not been leaning over the arm of his.

Their faces were only inches apart when House's pager went off.

* * *

House stumped for the elevators as fast as he could go. He had to keep adjusting his expression, because a gleeful (and relieved) grin wasn't going to do much for his rep as a heartless bastard if anyone happened to see it. 

He'd been so close to not saying anything at all, and then that awful pause while Cameron tried to figure out whether he was serious...he had to admit he'd given her plenty of reason to believe he could be trying to trick her into something.

But he didn't have time to think about Cameron right now. Right now there was something more pressing to ponder, because the patient's boyfriend had finally arrived and, visiting hours being over, needed an escort to her room. Cameron had offered to go, but House wanted a few minutes alone with the boyfriend.

The elevator seemed to take longer than usual to move between floors. House tapped his fingers on the wall, trying to match the drum riff from "Time Stand Still" that was playing over his earbuds. He lost it at the same place he always did and sighed. He was a pianist, damnit, not a drummer. Before the riff could come around again, the elevator doors slid open. House left the car before they were fully retracted, pulling out the earbuds as he went.

The tall man standing by the reception desk heard him coming and turned around. House realized the other man was almost his own height; it was a fraction of an inch one way or the other. Built like a Viking, though, and blond as one. All he needed was a big axe and a horned helmet. House's brain presented him with a picture that also included a bearskin and a very wide belt, and he had to fight down the grin again.

"Mr. Cutler, I presume!" he said, trying not to sound inappropriately cheerful. He watched as the man's eyes flicked over him and took in the cane.

"You're Dr. House?" Cutler replied. And then he did something very few people did, unless they knew what to expect before meeting House: he extended his _left_ hand to shake. Simultaneously impressed and a little suspicious, House shook hands briefly.

"In the flesh," he said. "You made good time."

"I think I was under the speed limit for at least a few minutes," Cutler said wryly. "I--this is--" He stumbled over the words.

House felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. "Well, let's make sure I haven't dragged you all the way here for no reason," he said to cover. "Walk this way." He waved and started for the elevator.

"I don't think I can walk that way," Cutler said, catching up to him. "No cane."

House gave the man a sidelong look and discovered a perfectly straight face. Too straight to be real, so House quirked an eyebrow at him. Cutler shrugged. "Dunno. You don't seem like the type who takes it too seriously," he said.

"Only when it hurts," House said, which reminded him that it was coming up on time for his midnight pill anyway, so he fished the Vicodin bottle out of his pocket. "That's what this is for." Cutler's eyebrows went up when House shook the pill into his palm.

"That's gotta be some pain," he said. "They let you work with Vicodin in your system?"

"What can I say? I'm special," House said. He swallowed his pill and hit the elevator call button. "Good eye, by the way."

"I was an EMT for a while," Cutler said. "OK, so what's up with, uh, Janet?" His voice almost cracked on the name. House had been carefully ignoring the fact that the man's eyes were red. The elevator pinged its arrival and they boarded.

"She walked into the lobby and had a seizure," House said. "Since then she's had two more. She's been awake for a total of maybe an hour since she got here."

"Seizure. Epilepsy?"

"Not according to the EEG," House said. "We've also ruled out fever, diabetes, lupus, porphyria, encephalitis, and all the popular neuropathies--we've ruled out pretty much everything that _can_ cause seizures."

"So you just don't know what's wrong," Cutler said.

"She has a theory," he said. The elevator arrived on their floor.

"She does?"

"Yeah."

"Soooo...are you going to tell me what it is?" Cutler asked, when House didn't elaborate.

House stopped walking and leaned against the wall. "It's nuts."

"She's been having seizures, her brain is messed up."

"I believe her," House said. He fixed a stare on Cutler's eyes. "This is very important. I believe her, because nothing else fits." He'd thought about it from every angle, and in the end that belief was what had let him say what he'd said to Cameron.

Cutler didn't look away, but his brow furrowed. "OK," he said simply.

"She thinks she's from another universe," House said. "She thinks the seizures happen when she's confronted with new evidence of that fact." He watched the man carefully for any sign that he was in on some sort of scam.

Cutler actually closed his eyes for a long second, a reaction House would have bet his Gameboy was genuine. "And you believe this?" he asked. "Why?"

House sighed. "She told me some things about myself that no one but me should know. Things I did when I'd made damn sure there was no one else around."

"How does being from another universe let her know things about you?" Cutler asked.

"She said that the universe she's from has a TV show about me," House said, feeling faintly abashed. Not that he didn't love the idea (now that he'd gotten over not believing it), but in this context it was supremely uncomfortable.

He was watching Cutler closely enough to see a fascinating thing happen. Rather than considering the theory for an instant and immediately dismissing it as obvious nonsense, Cutler thought about it and decided to, for lack of a better phrase, accept it as a working hypothesis.

"OK," he said again.

"You're taking this remarkably well," House said.

"When I was a kid, I used to watch late night TV from a station in Detroit," Cutler said. "Better reception after dark, you know how it is. Anyway. You know how TV stations will show shots of the city they're in, like with the local news?" House nodded. "One of the shots this station would show was across the river into Canada. Showing Ottawa."

House called up a map in his mind. "The city across the river from Detroit is Windsor. I had a girlfriend from there."

Cutler smiled. "So did I, when I was older. But when I was a kid, the capital of Canada was called Windsor, and the city across the river from Detroit was Ottawa."

House thought that over for a second. "You're saying you're from another universe too," he said.

"Not recently," Cutler said. "Now, can I see Janet?"

"Sure," House said. "Not like she's going to make you any crazier."

"You said you believed her," Cutler said.

"Maybe I'm crazy too," House said. He pushed off the wall and started walking again.

"You seem to be the useful kind of crazy," Cutler said.

House debated with himself over how to present the next fact. Given the reaction--or lack thereof--to the whole different-universe thing, maybe straight out was the way to go. "One more thing," he said. "She thinks you're dead."

"If she's from another universe, maybe I am. There," Cutler replied.

"Just...don't be surprised if seeing you sets off another seizure. If she's awake yet." They rounded the corner and had a view down the hall into the patient's room. Cameron was sitting reading her book again, which meant the patient was probably still out.

House slid the door open. "Cameron. This is the boyfriend," he said by way of introduction. Cameron smiled--she had a lovely smile, he thought, and immediately quashed the thought as not fitting his image--and stood up.

"I'm Dr. Cameron," she said.

"Pete Cutler," the man said absently. He was looking past Cameron at the patient, who still seemed to be sleeping. The look on his face was hard to describe; he seemed afraid to believe what he was seeing, though at the same time desperately wanting to. He crossed the short distance to the bedside and stood there, looking down at the sleeping woman. "Janet," he said softly. Tentatively he reached out to her hand, which lay outside the blankets, and touched it as if he expected it to be insubstantial.

About then House realized Cameron was trying to get his attention. He spared her a glance; she was making "let's leave them alone" faces at him. He didn't want to leave; he wanted to stay and watch this, but when he eyebrowed as much at her she set her expression in the Determined Face. House sighed. It was a small enough concession to make, and hey--all the rooms had glass walls anyhow.

They stepped out into the hall as Cutler reached out to stroke the patient's cheek.

* * *

**Notes:** The end is near! And I guess, yeah, the House/Cam thing is happening. Sorry if you hate it. It could have been worse; it could have been Stacy. 


	8. Such Sweet Sorrow

House stood in silence until Cutler had gotten himself settled in a chair next to the bed. Something about the man's posture unsettled him, and he spent a few minutes trying to track down the associtation until it came to him: Cutler was leaning some of his weight on the bed, holding the patient's hand, and the reason House hadn't recognized the posture at once was because the last time he'd seen it, he'd been the patient and the person leaning had been Stacy. House glanced away, which brought Cameron into his line of sight; it made for a fine distraction. She caught him looking and smiled at him.

He felt like smiling back, but that wouldn't do. "This is why I don't talk to patients," House said, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "Makes _some people_ sappy."

"You don't have to worry. I doubt you're capable of sap," she said.

"Hey," House said, pretending to be wounded. "I bought you a corsage."

"That wasn't sappy," Cameron countered. "That was sweet."

"Sap _is_ sweet, that's why they used to make sugar out of it." He paused. "Just promise me something."

"What?"

"If I ever call you 'Allie', get Wilson to shoot me."

With a perfectly straight face House himself couldn't have topped, Cameron said, "I'll be too busy having a heart attack from the shock. Tell Foreman to do it."

"Foreman's going to kill me anyway, so it's kind of a moot point," House said meditatively. Cameron didn't comment, but her expression invited him to continue. "Before our date he told me how to handle you," House said, hiding a smirk when her face began to build up outrage. With any luck at all he'd be getting Foreman in a whole lot of trouble. "Told me to be a jerk so it wouldn't be such a letdown when I turned out to, well, be a jerk." He paused again. "I think he was trying to do the big brother thing." And truth be told, he'd admired Foreman for it. Not that that was going to make him try to stop her taking strips out of her coworker if she felt like it.

"You sure took his advice," she said wryly, and though he could tell there was annoyance under her tone he didn't think it was at him.

"You started it," he accused. "You thought the way to my heart was telling me a dead German had diagnosed me as an eight-year-old dipping a girl's braids in the inkwell."

"I never claimed to be good with relationships," Cameron said, in an offhand way that wasn't really offhand at all, and House filed the comment away for later prying. "Anyway, Freud was Swiss."

"Close enough," House said with a wave of his free hand.

"Why's Foreman going to kill you?" she asked.

"If a date was enough to make him give me advice, what's he going to do when he finds out I'm threatening your virtue?" House asked, leering at her a little for form's sake.

"My virtue is none of Foreman's business," she said, but House's attention was caught by something in the room again; as so often happened, he couldn't put his finger on it, but he still knew something in there was changing.

"She's waking up," he said.

Cameron gave him a dubious look. A moment later they both saw Cutler's posture change, and he turned to glance at them through the glass, beckoning.

"Told you," House said smugly.

They stepped into the room as the patient said, without opening her eyes, "Is it Wednesday yet?" House grabbed Cameron's arm before she could reply and raised an eyebrow at Cutler, who looked uncertain. House made an impatient _go on go on_ gesture at him.

"Half past," he said. The patient's eyes flew open. House tensed. If she was going to seize again, this would be when she did it. He could feel Cameron going on alert beside him. They waited.

"Pete?" the patient said at last. She sounded like her breath had been knocked out of her body, but House felt himself relax just a notch. This wasn't going to set her off; he could tell.

"Hey, you," Cutler said, very quietly.

"Heya," she said, and paused, looking deep in thought. "So...what's up?"

Cutler gave her a small smile and said, "Primarily an adverb." He paused in his turn and House could practically see the wheels turning in his head. "So. Velociraptors." Which didn't make any sense at all, except that the patient seemed to think it did because she said, "_Kak,_" and that must have been the right response because Cutler's smile broadened. For a second the two of them just looked at one another.

"I missed you," the patient said softly.

"Missed you too," Cutler said, and she sat up to embrace him.

"Velociraptors?" Cameron said quietly beside him. She didn't really have to bother--House was pretty sure the other two were absolutely insensible to anything outside their tiny circle just at the moment. But he kept his own voice lower than usual when he asked, "Don't you know a couple joke when you hear it?"

Cameron was making motions like she wanted to leave the room again, but this time House was adamant. He did look mostly away, and let them go till the hugging got a little more intense. Which was an impulse he fully understood, but there were other things to think about right now. He cleared his throat.

"I'd tell you to get a room, but..." House gestured around. "We need to figure out what we're going to do with you." The couple broke out of their kiss; Cutler looked a little annoyed but the patient had a smile on her face that might almost be called indulgent. He did notice she had tight hold of Cutler's hand. "The best-case scenario is that all your information is exactly the same here as it was...wherever you're from. I find that unlikely because of the other differences." He waved vaguely at himself to demonstrate what he meant. "If that's the case, we just say that the dead body in Pittsburgh was misidentified."

The patient stared at him and House remembered, too late, that she probably didn't know she was supposed to be dead. "The me from here...I thought...oh God." Cameron gave House a dirty look, as did Cutler.

"She drove off the road three days ago," Cutler said gently, turning his attention back to the patient. "Over the cliff on Bigelow, going into downtown. They think she hit an ice patch, but they don't know how she managed to get through the guard rail."

"Oh," she said in a very small voice. Then, "On Bigelow? That's how--" and she stopped talking abruptly.

"That's how the other _me_ died?" Cutler asked her.

"Yeah. But that was a year and a half ago." She paused, thinking, and House recognized the tactic--think about a puzzle to avoid thinking about anything else. "Then again, if this is Season Two that's about right." She looked up at House and said dryly, "I'm assuming you told him about the TV show." House just nodded. "So I'm not just in a different universe--" House twitched. He'd accepted it, yes, but it was still weird to hear. "--I went back in time too."

"The only important information is the insurance," Cameron said, and they all looked at her. "As long as we can get the copies the nurses made of the insurance card, you can just let the hospital bill you and submit it to Blue Shield then. They won't have put it in the system yet, you came in right at the end of business hours." House felt a little let down--he'd been planning a Great Escape in the middle of the night to keep her out of the hands of the Mysterious Government Agents who were supposed to swarm around this kind of thing. Filching paperwork from the nurse's station wasn't going to be nearly as much fun. "And you'll need to reapply for your driver's license," Cameron continued, "but that's not as urgent as long as you don't drive until you have it."

"What about the seizures?" Cutler asked, after they'd all taken a moment to digest the simplicity of the plan.

"What about 'em?" House asked. "I'm pretty sure that if finding out she's dead didn't set one off, nothing will."

"What are we going to tell Chase and Foreman?" Cameron asked.

"I can check out AMA," the patient said. "_If_ I have another seizure, I can come back, because there'll actually be a reason for it then."

"We had 'em halfway convinced you were crazy anyway," House said airily. "PTSD, survivor guilt, that kind of thing."

"You'll have to sulk," she said, "to convince them."

House grinned at her. "I think I can manage that."

* * *

"You can't be seriously letting her walk out of here," Foreman grumbled the next day. The team was assembled in House's office, where they'd been chewing over the patient's imminent departure for almost an hour. 

House bounced his cane on the floor, trying to look irritable. It wasn't that hard, since he'd ended up getting a total of about four hours' sleep, mostly on Wilson's office couch, and was still wearing yesterday's clothes. "There's nothing I can do about it," he snapped. "Even Cameron couldn't talk her into staying." Cameron, who had actually gotten home to sleep, looked only a little better than he did.

"So? Do what you always do. Scare her into it," Foreman said.

"If it's psychological, there's nothing we can do anyway," Cameron said.

"If she has another seizure away from the hospital, she could die," Chase protested.

"Gee, Chase, I wonder why it didn't occur to me to _mention_ that," House said, rolling his eyes.

Foreman folded his arms. "I just think you should give it another try," he said, in the voice that communicated that he was trying to reason with an infant.

"As she's being wheeled to the exit?" House asked. "Sure, I work well under pressure." He levered himself to his feet and grabbed his cane. "Cameron and I are going to go watch her walk to her doom. You two can start looking for another case." He swept out of his office, ignoring the start of more protests behind him, Cameron trailing in his wake.

They got to the patient's room as she was getting into the required wheelchair. Which meant House wasn't going to get to grope Cameron in the elevator, alas. He hadn't gotten to grope her at all yet, and was desperately trying to refuse to acknowledge the little voice that said "grope" was much too crass a word for what he wanted to do with Cameron. But right now he had a patient to see off.

"Anything else you wanted to tell us?" House asked, as they headed down the hall.

The patient was quiet for a second. "Yeah," she said. "Two more things. If Chase hasn't had his followup with Sam McGinley yet, tell him, if he has to say something, to tell Sam about his dad." And then she paused, and when she glanced up at House she looked...sorry. Not quite pitying, but sorry. "And...the ketamine won't be permanent, if you do it."

House stared at her. "Ketamine? Like Special K? That's a veterinary tranquillizer."

"Yeah. Don't worry, you'll figure it out." She drew a breath as they reached the elevators. "This Cassandra gig sucks, you know that?"

"It usually does," Cutler put in from his post behind the wheelchair. "At least they believe you." The elevator arrived, but it had other people on it so the conversation had to end there.

Their arrival in the lobby was anticlimactic. Sticking to their roles, House and Cameron looking disapproving as Cutler wheeled the patient to the door. House even made a show of refusing to shake her hand, though Cameron could thaw enough to do it.

"Thanks, House," the patient said quietly.

"No problem," he replied under his breath, and then, louder, "If you're not going to listen to me, why should you thank me?" She gave him a small smile and turned away. "Don't come running to me if your brain explodes!" he called.

She didn't turn around, but House could tell she was laughing.

* * *

**Notes:** No, this is not quite the end. 


	9. Changes Aren't Permanent, But Change Is

**Notes**: OK, this is the end, because I couldn't just present all that alternate-universe stuff without some sort of payoff. If you liked it, I'd really appreciate a review--actually, I'd appreciate a review even more if you _didn't_ like it, because then I can improve in the future. I'm especially looking for critiques of characterization.

* * *

_Your changed complexions are to me a mirror_  
_Which shows me mine changed too; for I must be_  
_A party in this alteration, finding_  
_Myself thus alter'd with 't._

--_A Winter's Tale,_ Act I, Scene II, by William Shakespeare

Allison stirred her coffee idly, glancing at Chase. She and House had agreed that this one was her job, though she still wasn't certain the approach she'd decided on was the best; Chase was not a particularly open person and she was afraid she was just going to drive him further into his shell. He was, as usual, immersed in a crossword, and since Foreman hadn't arrived yet it seemed like as good a time as any.

"You have a followup with Sam McGinley this afternoon, don't you?" she asked, keeping her tone light and merely curious. Chase tensed, as he always did when that case was mentioned, and put his pen in his mouth. Allison privately gave that one about two more days before he bit down on it hard enough to cause a leak. During the Vogler regime he'd ruined three shirts with ink stains.

"Yeah," he said shortly. He glanced at her, but she pretended to be immersed in her journal until he continued, "What about it?"

Allison looked at him over her reading glasses. "Nothing big," she said. "I was just thinking...Kayla came in about the same time your dad died, didn't she?" This was the thin ice, because Chase had never mentioned it and Allison herself hadn't put the pieces together until House had explained. If Chase retreated now, there'd be no way to get through to him till it was too late.

But Chase didn't say anything, just gave her a surprised glance that was answer enough for someone who'd been hanging around House for as long as they had. She nodded. "I saw his obit," she said by way of explaination. It wasn't even technically a lie; she'd made sure to look it up for exactly this purpose.

"Do you have a point, Cameron?" Chase asked. He was still staring at his crossword, but his tone had sharpened.

"Yeah, I do," she said. "You're only human, and a parent dying is a big thing even if you're estranged. You got distracted, but mistakes happen. It wasn't even a big mistake."

"Mistakes are as serious as the results they cause," Chase said evenly. Allison could tell who he was quoting by the way his accent slipped.

"It's not going to make Sam feel any better for you to lose your license," she said. "If you feel like you have to apologize to him, tell him about your dad. Don't give it as an excuse, just tell him." She wanted to keep talking, but she was afraid that if she did the point would be diluted, so she stopped and tried not to visibly hold her breath.

After a long moment, Chase said, "Thanks."

Allison smiled at him. "That's what friends are for, right?"

* * *

House stood near the door, watching Stacy as she wandered around the hotel room, turning on lights and opening doors and generally fidgeting. It was perfectly reasonable to share the last available room with a friend when your flights were grounded, but..."I have to know what's going on here," he said, trying to sound light and failing miserably. "Because when you have a fight with Mark, and you try to avoid me, I have to think that--" 

"That I'm feeling vulnerable and I don't want to be around you because it might lead to something," Stacy said. He'd missed being around her. He had to admit it. Cameron was good company, but she didn't strike sparks with him the same way Stacy always had.

He tapped his cane on the floor and said, "Right. But then a hotel room..."

"Might also lead to something."

"Hmm," House said. "So... which is it?" Suddenly he wasn't at all sure which he wanted it to be.

At the far side of the room, Stacy stopped pacing. "Our relationship is like an addiction," she said. "It's... like..."

"Really good drugs?" he suggested.

"No, it's like..." she paused to think, tilting her head back. "Vindaloo curry."

That was a comparison he'd never thought of. "Ok, sure," he said, not entirely certain where she was going with this.

"Really really hot Indian curry they make with red chilli peppers," Stacy said.

"I know what it is!" he said. "Didn't think it was addictive."

"You're abrasive and annoying and come on way too strong, like... vindaloo curry," she said, starting across the room towards him like a prowling cat. "And when you're crazy about curry that's fine, but no matter how much you love curry, you have too much of it, it takes the roof of your mouth off. And then you never want to see curry for a really really long time but you wake up one day and you think, God, I really miss curry." She stopped, enough inside his personal space to make her meaning clear, and turned her face up to see him better.

House put his free hand up to her cheek. She leaned into it, smiling, and he smiled back as he said, "But the curry's still just as hot. You know that, Stace."

"I've built up my tolerance," she said, and when she moved to kiss him he didn't even try to stop her. His hand slipped around to cradle her head, and he could feel the shape of the bones of her skull, still so familiar, and he threw his cane in the direction of the room's double bed without looking to see if it hit so he could put his right hand on her waist. But after a moment his conscience, that shrill annoying little voice, prodded him hard enough that he drew back a little.

"Stacy. I can't. I--" he said.

Stacy grabbed his face in both her hands and said, half-fierce, "For once in your life will you shut up?" She pulled him down to kiss her again, and nothing mattered. Nothing--not Mark, not Cameron, not all the things they'd done to hurt each other, because this was Stacy and he'd always loved her.

He knew they were both breaking promises but he didn't care. Cameron would get over it, it had only been a month and a half. He was almost lost when the cell phone rang.

She made a frustrated noise and kissed him one more time before she let him go so he could answer the phone.

"House," he said, trying to sound normal.

* * *

As they left Margo Dalton's house, Foreman commented, "I could've covered this. You need to get that test today." 

Allison made a little face and said, "I wish you guys'd remember my birthday instead of my HIV test."

"Forgive us for being concerned," Foreman said, half-serious.

"Don't worry about it. I went last night and had the blood drawn, they're going to test it today," Allison said. She looked back at the house and sighed. "That was a colossal waste."

Foreman shrugged. "Who would've known? Searching a high-end family home for illicit narcotics was such an obvious choice," he agreed.

* * *

"He should have been here 20 minutes ago," Allison said. Though she admitted it only to herself, she was more than a little nervous; House had been odd since he got back from Baltimore and she didn't know what to do about it. 

"Doubt if he makes it at all. I saw him leave with Stacy," Chase said, and Allison looked up sharply.

"He's probably just walking her to her car," she said around a sinking in her stomach. It would explain everything.

Chase quirked an eyebrow at her in a creditable imitation of their boss. "Oh, yeah. That sounds like House."

"He's not an idiot. He's not gonna hook up with a married woman," she protested.

"I hope he is getting some," Foreman said. "Maybe he'll mellow out." Allison did not snarl, "He _is_ getting some, you idiot," at him, but it was a near thing and most of what stopped her was that she and House were being as clandestine as was humanly possible. She didn't think he'd even told Wilson, mostly because Wilson hadn't come around to lecture her about being careful again.

Right about then they heard a sound so bizarre all three of them looked up from what they were doing to stare: it was House, and he was singing.

"What took you so long? It's midnight," Allison said when he'd gotten fully into the conference room.

She didn't think it was her imagination that House looked a little shifty when he replied, "Traffic. Cinco de Mayo. So if Ritalin isn't the problem, something else is going on. What is it?"

* * *

House stood on the roof, watching the sky turn colors. The door opened behind him and he turned to see Stacy, holding the paper he'd left on her desk. "The prescription for my heart condition. A bit on the cheesy side," she said. Her heels tapped on the concrete as she crossed to him. 

"I was trying for romantic," he said, and put his arms around her. She leaned into him, her head nestled against his collarbone. "Still fits." She made a noise of agreement. He wanted to stay there forever, but there were some practicalities to take care of first.

"Did you tell Mark?" he asked. He felt her stiffen.

"I told him I had to work late," she said. She didn't sound like she was smiling anymore.

House pulled back a little to look into her face. "You going to tell him?"

"How am I going to tell him?" Stacy asked. "Still working on that phrasing. How about, 'Know all that stuff you were worried about when we first came here, honey? You were right.'"

"Pithy," House said.

"Everything's easy when you don't care if you hurt anyone."

"You already did the hurting part," House said, thinking, _And so did I_. "He just doesn't know it yet." _Neither does she_.

"If I never tell him, it'll never hurt," Stacy said. It was like punch to the gut, because if he'd betrayed Cameron for this he was a worse person than popular imagination realized. He tried not to show it on his face. "I want not to love Mark. I want to hate you. I want all of this to be simple, but it's not," Stacy continued.

"You can either have a life with me, or you can have a life with him," House said. And he really wasn't certain which one he wanted her to pick. "It can't be both. It's not easy. But it is simple." Stacy nodded, and they stood there in silence for a long time.

* * *

He left Mark in the stairwell and stumped angrily down the hall. Damn the man anyway. What gave him the right to be so desperate? As if he had more right to be happy than House did. _I knew her first!_ he thought, knowing precisely how juvenile it sounded and not caring. And then he rounded a corner a little too fast and almost ran over Cameron. 

As they recovered from the near spill House realized that she was nearly white-lipped with anger. "House," she said coldly. "I was looking for you." She looked up at him, a challenge in her eyes that he had to look away from. "You could have done me the courtesy of telling me yourself. You didn't have to let me figure it out."

He sighed and leaned on his cane a little more heavily. "I told you I don't change for people," he said, trying not to mutter.

"Everybody lies," Cameron spat, and turned on her heel. House watched her go, knowing he had about two steps to make this decision. He thought of Mark, stranded in the stairwell; he thought of Stacy, beside his bed as he slipped under the influence of the drugs, telling him she was sorry.

"Cameron," he said. She didn't pause. "Cameron. _Allison_." She stopped dead. But she didn't turn around.

"We have to figure out what's wrong with Margo," he said. "And then I'm going to go talk to Stacy. I'm going to tell her I love her." The tension radiated from Cameron's shoulders like heat over asphalt; he could almost see the walls beyond her shimmering. "That's one of the things that isn't going to change, and if you can't deal with it I don't blame you. But Cam--Allison. She's leaving." He paused. "I'm going to tell her to leave."

Cameron turned. She was trying not to cry, though House figured those tears were at least half angry. "Why would you do that?" she asked, her voice low and as harsh as he'd ever heard it.

"Because she couldn't be happy with me if I didn't change," he said. "But mostly because I..."

"You what?"

"I can love more than one person. I am that good," House said. Cameron's eyes went wide. He took a step towards her, and she didn't move back. Encouraged, he took another. She still didn't move. He stopped close enough that he could have touched her, but he didn't quite dare. "I'm sorry," he said softly.

Cameron sighed and leaned her head against his chest. "You're a jerk," she said unsteadily.

"I know."

House noted with distant amusement that they both checked that the hallway was clear before they kissed.

* * *

Wilson held the MRI films up to the light as they walked down the hall. "MRI looks exactly the same as it did two years ago. Nerves don't seem to be regenerating," he said. 

"I figured as much," House answered.

Wilson took a breath and House rolled his eyes. Here it was. "Several researchers have proven that psychological pain can manifest as physical pain," Wilson said, faux-offhand.

House glared at him, as much as he could glare and keep walking. "You think I have a conversion disorder? You want me to see a shrink."

"Brilliant idea sending Stacy away, it's really done wonders for you," Wilson said, sarcasm heavy in his voice.

"Hey, you're the one who kept telling me she was married," House protested.

"Because you didn't seem to care," Wilson said.

"True. Did I tell you I got a look at Little Mark when I got the urine sample? And I do mean _Little_ Mark."

Wilson made the face he made when House told him something he thought was gross, though he didn't go into the full blown _Ewww_ dance he did sometimes. "Well, if her being taken didn't stop you, what was it?" he asked doggedly.

"Her being taken didn't stop me. _Me_ being taken did," House said, and kept walking, trying (not very hard) to not smirk. Wilson stopped short in the middle of the hallway. House paused and glanced back over his shoulder.

"_What?_" Wilson demanded. He seemed to realize he could walk again and caught up with a few quick steps.

House gave his friend a condescending glance. "Come on, it can't be that hard to figure out," he said. "I'll even give you a hint: I like girls."

"It's not Cuddy," Wilson said with an absolute conviction House found hilarious. "That means it's..."

"Young ingénue doctor falling in love with gruff, older mentor," House said smugly, knowing Wilson would recognize the quote. "She hasn't managed to help me understand my wounded heart yet, but I've got a couple other organs that are pretty happy about it."

Wilson started to laugh.

* * *

Allison was packing her things when House came into the conference room and leaned against the doorframe. Chase and Foreman had already left for the night; she'd been waiting to see if House had any plans...and also because she'd been worried about him all day. He'd barely been able to get out of bed two mornings running. 

She smiled at him as she flipped her laptop case closed, but House didn't smile back; he seemed to be deep in thought. At last he said, "You were right. I am distracted." She stopped what she was doing, not sure how to reply. "I need a shot of morphine in my spine," he said reluctantly.

Allison blinked at him. "I--I can't do that," she said, when she'd recovered her voice.

"Sure you can, just get a syringe. You're a doctor," he said, with a patently false joviality.

"But I shouldn't be _your_ doctor," she said. "We can still catch Chase or Foreman, probably."

"I don't want them knowing I'm in this much pain," House said. "Foreman's already questioning my judgement." Allison could hardly believe House was trusting her with this, but she still couldn't quite bring herself to agree.

"House--Greg--morphine is awfully extreme," she said. Leaning, his right hand was free and he rubbed his thigh restlessly.

"So's this," he said. She'd finally seen the scar about a week earlier, and he was right--it was horrific. "One shot, that's all I'm asking. Just enough to get me through this case. I can't let the kid die because I'm not on my game."

They stood silently for a few seconds while Allison wrestled with her conscience. The rain pattered on the windows.

"I'll get a syringe," she said.

* * *

Allison had gone to bed early with a headache, but the sound of voices in the living room woke her. A few minutes later, House poked his head into the bedroom and said, "Don't wander around naked. Wilson's staying here for a few days." He was gone again before she could ask for details.

* * *

House studied the films. "Singular cortex controls emotions, this mushy spot explains the euphoria. Question is, what's causing the mush?"

Cameron said, "That's a question you might want to ask a neurologist. Foreman is a selfish jerk, but he's a neurologist, and he's the only one who's been in that apartment."

"This is why he shouldn't be here. You wouldn't call him a jerk if he was here. If you think he screwed up at that apartment, you'd keep it to yourself," House said.

"No! I'm just concerned because a colleague is sick." House blinked at the films, then turned to look at her. Foreman was sick.

"Well, we'll never know; as long as he's not here, he's just like any other patient," House said slowly. "Which means we can dump on him all we want. What's eating the selfish jerk's brain?"

Chase had realized that House and Cameron were sharing a thought; he looked back and forth between them uncertainly as he said, "West Nile, or Eastern Equine Encephalitis…"

"Aren't there some amoebic infections that can cause neurological dysfunction? _Naegleria_, maybe." Cameron asked.

"Good one," House said. "Chase, test Foreman's blood. It's probably not person-to-person since he and Joe are the only ones who are sick, but you never know. Cameron, start Joe on an antiparasitic and we'll see if he gets his eyesight back."

* * *

"You're crazy, you know," Allison said. "This use of ketamine isn't legal in the US, and you _know_ it won't be permanent. _She_ said it wouldn't be." She sat by his bed in the ICU, trying not to show how much it scared her to see him like this. He was pale, there were tubes coming out of every orifice, and for all he'd joked about craving fish tacos Allison knew quite well he couldn't have kept solid food down. That would happen, when you were a gunshot victim and doped to the gills.

"If I know that, I won't crash when it starts hurting again," House argued. She wanted to shush him, but he'd use up even more of his limited energy keeping quiet than he would if she let him talk. "It'll be a vacation. Even if it still hurts after...if I can get back to what it was like a year ago, we already know I can handle it."

"Cuddy isn't going to let you," Allison said.

"She will if you talk to her," he said.

"That would mean I agreed it was a good idea," Allison said. House glared at her, as much as he could glare. It was a cover for real desperation. He'd had her put a metal box up on his bookshelf a few weeks ago, somewhere where he'd have to climb a ladder to get it, and she was terribly afraid she knew what was in that box.

"If I don't do something, it's just going to keep getting worse," House said, and Allison knew it was true. Mostly they managed to keep the breakthrough pain at bay with massage and heating packs and pure distraction, but the episodes had been coming more often. She sighed and said, "I'll talk to her."

* * *

House glanced at the folder and away, then back because something had caught his eye. _Tritter, Michael_, the label read. This was it, then. This was the last of them. He pushed open the door, and before he was fully inside the exam room the patient said, "I was waiting two hours out there." 

House stifled an impulse to ask if the man had ever considered writing his memoires and shrugged. "Free clinic, lots of people with no money. Sorry but that's the way it goes." He sat on the doctor's stool. "Let's see it."

"You don't introduce yourself?" the patient asked.

"Sorry, I thought you were waiting two hours, didn't know you wanted to chat," House said, and put on his brightest voice. "Hi, I'm Greg. How about that local sports team?" The patient looked annoyed, but opened up his pants. House looked over the exposed flesh and damn if she hadn't been right. "It's not an infection, you'll be happy to know," he said.

"How can you tell without--"

House did not roll his eyes, though it was a near thing. "Med school. I don't need to touch you in your private place to tell it's not an infection, because I can see the cause from here. You're chewing nicotine gum, which can cause dehydration, which can cause wear and tear. All you need is a lubricant. Or foreplay if you're cheap." Which maybe wasn't what she'd meant when she said "polite", so he added, "I can write you a scrip for something to tone it down till it heals, or you can go to a drug store and get the over-the-counter stuff."

"You're rude," the patient said.

"So I've been told," House replied, keeping hold of his temper with both hands. "Look, I understand that we guys get cautious about Mr. Happy, but trust me--you've got nothing to worry about." He started writing on his prescription pad, tore off the scrip and held it out. "Take this, fill it at the pharmacy. Use it for a week. If it's still this bad then, come back and we'll test you for everything in the book. OK?"

The patient eyed the scrip. "You're positive," he said.

"As positive as I can be without my malpractice insurance going up," House replied. While the other man was thinking it over, House checked the time and extracted his Vicodin bottle from his pocket. Not that he really needed to check when it was time for a pill--his leg told him in no uncertain terms--but he liked to keep up the formalities.

"Fine," the patient said. He fastened his pants and took the scrip.

* * *

Later, House leaned on his balcony wall. He didn't turn when he heard Wilson's door open. 

"Ever have one of those moments when you don't have a direction anymore?" he asked, as Wilson settled into place on the other side of the dividing wall.

"You're getting philosophical on me now?"

"I'm always philosophical, I just don't always inflict it on people."

"That's kinda what I meant," Wilson said.

House drummed his fingers on the wall. "The last year or so, I felt like I had a direction. Signposts. And I just passed the last one."

"So...what are you going to do?" Wilson asked, a hint of real curiosity under his humoring-House voice.

House smiled into the sunset. "Guess I'll have to draw my own map."


End file.
